How do I search Outlook messages for colons, spaces or parentheses?

Question

I have a few hundred messages that are all mostly identical. Each message has one of the following strings in the message body.

foo:1 (bar)
foo:2 (bar)

I would like to find all messages with the first string, but not the second.

I have tried everything I can think of in both the quick and advanced search functions in Outlook 2010. In particular, all of the following search terms return messages with foo:2 (bar).

"foo:1 (bar)"
"foo:1"
"foo:1 "
"1 (bar)"
"1 "
"foo\:1"
"1 \(bar\)"

Here's an example screenshot showing what I'm talking about:

The two messages that are found both have message bodies corresponding to their subject lines.

How can I find these messages using Outlook search?

Answer 1

Try using

~="foo:1"

It's not obvious, but if you use quotes you can also precede them with a comparison operator. This comparison operator with the tilde means 'has this substring'.

You can also use more normal comparisons, like <, but they are not generally very useful.

Answer 2

You must use Advanced Find (CTRL+SHIFT+F), using the Advanced Tab (pictured below), to search for special characters. Instant Search ignores special characters.

Answer 3

[using Microsoft Outlook for Microsoft 365 Enterprise at my company, Version 2008 (Build 13127.21348)]

Trythe following:

1. Within Outlook, select Search > Search Tools > Advanced Find
2. In the Appointments and Meetings tab Search for the word(s): field enter the word (including special characters) you are trying to find (e.g. Training:)
3. In the More Choices tab, select the Match case checkbox
4. Click the Find now button

This gave me the results I wanted. I was looking only for "training" events I had completed where I put "Training:" in the Subject. Using the Match case checkbox forced the search to include the colon.

Hope this helps!

Answer 4

Outlook search doesn't work, apparently, so I went through every message manually and categorized them by sight.